Christmas Cookies!

There's just something about Christmas Cookies! There are so many great kinds of cookies at Christmas, and my mom made some of the best! Some of her best were shortbread, lemon bars, spritz and some that were called bars by the fire.

 

My sibs and I started a tradition when we were young kids. With mom's help, we started making our own Christmas cookies. We made a big double or quadruple batch of sugar cookie dough. Then we would roll it out and use cookie cutters to cut out dozens of different shapes. Oh – we had lots of normal Christmas shapes: Santas, reindeer, candy canes, angels, Christmas trees and all the other traditional icons. We ALSO had things like sharks, cars, a cowboy boot, giraffes, flip flops, hearts, hands, airplane, a pineapple, ducks, kangaroos, cows, and whole bunch more – a pretty funny wide assortment of odd things.

We would then make up a bunch of bowls of different colored icing and little bowls of nuts, chocolate chips, all sorts of sprinkles,and  a ton of different types of toppings. And then the fun would begin. We would spend hours baking and decorating the cookies. They weren’t especially delicious, but we had a lot of fun making them. It was an entire evening of laughing, singing along with Christmas songs, making cookies and generally having a good time with family members.

We have continued this for all these years. I’ve included a bunch of pics from one of our most recent times. These days, there are spouses, kids and nieces and nephews, but we always make time for it. It’s as much a part of our Christmas celebration as all the “normal” stuff.  Although - if you look at some of the cookies, you'll see there's few of them that are not very normal and reflect the late hour at which we were finishing up the decorating.  You can click on the pics to enlarge them and see all our fun shapes!

What fun and unique traditions does your family do for the holidays?

We're in, I'm back. Wow! - 5 months

Well - It's been 5 months since I last posted. We've been in our house for just over a month. Whew! What a big project.

Here is a link to the website that we sat up and posted to on a constant basis. It shows our house from the beginning to the end. It is such a huge blessing to have a home that works for my family and especially my son.

http://www.goldenhillshome.info

We have tons of pictures here, although I do need to have some final pictures put in. We're still looking to finish decorating (heck -we're still looking for new couches) so I'll post more when we get them all done.

In the meantime, I am intending to get back into blogging... It will take me awhile to get back into the swing of it, but I'm excited to reconnect with you all!

Sunday Drives...

We just bought a new van (new to us, it’s a 2008). We weren’t intending on buying a new van, but after someone decided to not slow down and totaled the backend of our van when my wife stopped at a crosswalk, we had no choice. (she’s ok… bit of whiplash, but feeling pretty good now – thanks for asking!)

Our van was wheelchair accessible which allowed us to transport our disabled son, so we had to order a replacement van from a company in Michigan that performs the conversions. We were without a van (and a 2^nd car) for almost 3 weeks as we shopped around, chose one, arranged for financing, worked out the insurance and waited for delivery.

It arrived Sunday morning and we met up with the guy who delivered it in a parking lot. It came in on one of those cool car carrier trucks. It traveled a few thousand miles and saw some rain and snow, so I got it all cleaned up and we took a drive on Sunday afternoon.

A Sunday drive.

It was a lot of fun as we drove around looking at all the wheat fields of the Palouse where we live (this is the prettiest time of year – all the fields are beautiful shades of green). Of course we were oohing and aahing at the things in our new van, but we spent the afternoon taking a drive and being together in our new van.

It made me wonder what happened to the practice of taking a Sunday drive. We grew up taking Sunday drives as a family. These were perfect outings for the Spring or Fall, when the weather wasn’t quite up to camping weather yet, but you wanted to get out and enjoy it. Mom would make up a picnic lunch and we’d take off right after we got home from church. There were a number of lakes, parks and rivers that we’d go to. There wasn’t a lot of planning ahead or buying stuff. We’d just hop in the car and go.

There are probably a few reasons why these are going by the wayside. When gas prices went up, some families might have cut back. As fewer folks went to church, Sunday afternoons lost their uniqueness – they became like another Saturday. As so many other entertainment options increased, an afternoon drive was less of a special thing.

I’d encourage you to try this as a family. Of course, to get the full effect, you’d have to leave the ipods, ipads, iphones, notebooks, zunes, cell phones, dvd players and gps systems at home. But – it might be fun! Give it a try and get to know your family as you enjoy the scenery!

Pizza Night, '70s Style!

It seems that lately there has been a lot of discussion about food on the blogs I frequent. We all love food, don’t we?

I felt like I should share what was one of my favorite meals growing up. Coming from a low to middle class family, we didn’t go out for dinner a lot, so we found ways to get around that. We made what we couldn’t afford to go out and buy as often as we’d have liked.

One of the best things that my mom made was Pizza. She used Appian Way pizza crust mix, which came with a can of pizza sauce, and we would make 2 or 3 pizzas at a time. These were awesome. They were big rectangular pies because she’d use cookie sheets to make them, and it often turned into a bit of a family effort. I think having these pizzas might have made me like foods that kids don’t necessary like – things like mushrooms, green peppers and olives. We all got involved in the building of the pizzas and so we had a personal interest in them and wanted to see if the ones we helped “design” came out good.

It was a special night when we had pizza for dinner, because we usually got to have pop with it. Pop for dinner – or anytime for that matter – was a special event. And, since it was so different than our normal dinners, we used to be able to eat out on the picnic table in the backyard, or around the counter island in the kitchen. It was very memorable and special because of how seldom we did it.

…funny how things like that help us to really appreciate our families and the simple lives we had growing up.

5 Blasts From The Pasts this ‘70s guy misses seeing…

I took this idea from my friend Darrin over at Dad’s Dish Retro

5 Things This Retro Dad Misses Seeing...(another GREAT blog). Here’s a list of great everyday things gone by…

Lemonade Stands:

These were every bunch of neighborhood kids’ idea of striking it rich in the summer, and we did it all by ourselves! All we had to do was get mom to get us the glasses, make up the lemonade for us, help us find a table and some chairs, bring everything out and set it up at the curb for us, and we were set! Spend an entire afternoon selling cups of lemonade at 5 to 10 cents each and we might make $2 to $3! Split that 4 or 5 ways and were “rich”.

Record Parties

Did you ever do this? A bunch of us would get together and all bring all of our latest records (often just 45’s) and spend a whole evening listening to them together. We’d usually sing at the top of our lungs, and sometimes have a big pizza party, too. Great times of make-believing that we were rock bands, and dreaming of the day when we were really gonna be a band!

Variety Shows

These are now only known by this generation if they happen to linger on a late night ½-hour pitch by Guthy-Renker. Watching Andy Williams, Dean Martin, Carol Burnett, Sonny and Cher, Flip Wilson, etc – so many more than can be listed here. These were awesome and we were treated to a plethora of the big star actors, actresses and performers of the time. There’s no way to even compare these shows to anything today. And what was so amazing about the stars back then is that they could all dance, sing and act and were all good at it!

Kids Dressed up for Things

When was the last time that you saw a family out for dinner at anything but a high-end restaurant and the kids were dressed up for the occasion? Not pressed shirts and ties, but at least clean, well-fitting and nice looking clothes. We used to do this to go out to Denny’s or even a buffet-type meal. Other things we’d dress up for: Dinner at the Grandparents’, shopping downtown, going to a movie, family birthday parties – or a friend’s birthday party – and other gatherings, visiting family friends. It was never an option to NOT dress nicely… it’d sure be nice to see this on some level in society again.

Good Cartoons

Every Saturday morning! They were the good old fashioned ones – deemed too violent for kids today because a certain coyote would get squished into an accordion, or fall to a canyon floor only to emit a little poof of smoke upon impact. They were simple, funny, entertaining and carried no hidden messages. If Mel Blanc were to see what passes for cartoons these days, he’d surely roll over in his grave a FEW times!

Christmas Memories - The Day

I am on vacation. I am spending Christmas wih my family and with my wife's family. This is how we spend Christmas. A few days and up through Christmas Eve with my family, and Christmas Day and a few days after with my wife's family, only 60 miles away from each other. We leave the confines of home and our little corner of the world to visit family and spend time in the areas we grew up and had our early Christmas's.

I have realized that as much as I love keeping up this blog, I do enjoy vacationing and am not much for using a laptop. I'm writing on one now, but I probably won't do another entry until next Tuesday. So - I pray that you all have a very Merry Christmas celebrating the birth of Christ, and that you have wonderful times of visiting with and enjoying your families!

Christmas Memories - The Decorations

We had plenty of decorations that went up all around the house, and we had fun putting them all up.

Since I grew up in a house full of kids – there were four of us – by nature, we were competitive. We had a beautiful Manger set and it had all of the classic pieces. Every year we would all want to be the one to find Baby Jesus.

All of the figurines were wrapped in tissue, and we had our own silly rules in “the search for Jesus”. You couldn’t just rifle through the box and try to grab the smallest one in hopes of finding it, you had to unwrap whichever one you pulled out and place in the crèche. There was no prize or special recognition for finding the Baby Jesus – just bragging rights that seldom lasted longer than the evening. But – YOU remembered! And every time you looked at the scene you knew that it was YOU who was responsible for Baby Jesus this year.

We had these extensive little village scenes. These weren’t fancy set-ups, but they still had a magical air about them. The snow was just sparkly, fluffy cotton, and the buildings we kind of small and didn’t light up or anything. The trees were a bit oversized and had steel wire trunks with pipe cleaner type material that were the branches. They did make a good cone shape with some big clumps of fake snow on them and little platforms so they stood up. The funniest thing was that mom picked up some plastic elk that were WAY oversized. This was always humorous to me, but we still put them up. My brother and I would secretly have little terror episodes of the attack of the mutant elks.

There were also lots of little individual decorations that we put up all over - all part of our own traditions. One other cool thing we did was that Mom always made her own door decoration. My brother and I always had to find downed branches for mom to use. They weren’t really fancy or anything, but they were always homemade and originals.

What memories do you have of your decorations?

A Christmas Story

What is Christmas, really?

I want to spend some time and write about my memories, and I will, but I have to share this first. A friend of mine posted this and I recommend that you read it – it’ll warm your heart.


This short story is the author’s memories of spending Christmas at his Aunt Ida’s house. It’s full of the things that Christmas should be about. It tells of what it was like when the living rooms at Christmas were filled with the sounds of families talking or kids laughing, not the football game on a 52" plasma; with families making memories and having appropriate conversations, not pieces of fractured families avoiding each other or talking about the latest celebrity gossip; of kids playing in a pile of coats, not holed up in a back bedroom playing the latest bloody combat video game and seeing images of life way beyond their years.

Kind of made me stop in my tracks and remember what it means to have a family Christmas - not a "happy holidays" party; to be able to appreciate a personal, thought-out, given-with-love gift instead of another "picked-it-up-while-I-was-in-line-at-the-grocery-store" $50 gift card; to revel and take in with all my being the beautiful sounds, sights and magical wonder of Christmas instead of complaining about having to fight the crowds and traffic to "get my shopping done".

Christmas at Aunt Ida's

Enjoy!

Putting up the Lights!

It’s that time of year. Typically I try to do it in Thanksgiving week but I’ll be out doing it tomorrow. Yes – it’s the time of year to put up the Christmas lights… the outside Christmas lights. These days I have a nice set of lights that I have stored perfectly and that clip right into place… nice and neat. And although it’s going to be cold (mid-20’s) it’s all organized, ready to go and will be a fairly easy job.

Growing up, not so much.
Growing up, putting up the lights was a chore. It was usually my Dad and me, and sometimes my younger brother. There were a few reasons that putting up our lights back then was so much work.

To begin with – we used to put up a lot of them – all around our big deck and the entire perimeter of the house. Not a big house, but a lot of second story work. We also never seemed to do the exact design twice. I think that it was due more to the fact that every year another string would stop working or go missing.

We used the big lights back then – the type where you screwed each bulb in – and it sometimes took forever to get them all working, and they got really hot and burned your hand if you grabbed them for too long. Probably the biggest thing was that we had to nail every string up, and we used old style brads and hammers. Nothing like holding trying to hold the lights taut, hold the tiny brads in place and trying to swing the hammer in the snow or cold weather.

I have vivid memories of being very cold and wet when putting up lights… but they’re still good memories because they make me recall the great Christmases that I had growing up. It seemed like back then all of the neighbors in good ol’ suburbia put up lots of Christmas lights. Then - in the early ‘70s, we had the energy crisis and everyone became very energy conscious. It was rare to see lights up on any house for awhile and it was pretty depressing. It seemed that many of the people never started putting lights up again after that… kind of used it as an excuse.

Anyway – this would be a great weekend for you all to get your light up! Let’s get those neighborhoods a-glowing!